


Rest Stop

by Anonymous



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Awesome Mary Winchester, BAMF Castiel (Supernatural), Castiel is one of Mary’s boys, Depressed Castiel (Supernatural), Hurt Castiel (Supernatural), M/M, Protective Mary Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-12-26 21:14:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18290354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: After another bum lead, Mary and Cas are returning home to regroup and try to find another way to rescue Dean.But Mary has noticed that Dean, Sam and Cas seem able to find trouble anywhere.Nobody touches any of her boys.





	Rest Stop

**Author's Note:**

> See end notes for potential trigger warnings.

“You two okay?”

Cas set his phone on the seat between them and put on the speaker so they could both talk to Sam.

“Yes,” the angel said. “But the back up bunker had already been stripped. It’s possible there might still be more Men of Letters out there, other than Ketch.”

Mary tightened her grip around the steering wheel. So, Ketch was now kind of on their side (didn’t mean she trusted him) but if there were more of his pals out there, it meant things had gotten a lot more dangerous.

The last thing they needed was another enemy to fight.

“Then you should both come home,” Sam said. “We’ll talk about it, figure out what to do.”

Mary nodded to herself. That sounded like a great idea, but she wasn’t sure she had another six hours behind the wheel in her, and after what had happened back there, she wasn’t going to ask Cas to drive.

“I think we’re gonna pull in somewhere, honey,” she told her son. “Start back in the morning.”

It wasn’t like any of the British survivors were likely to turn up and try to murder them in their sleep. 

Cas shot her a questioning look, but didn’t disagree, and they both bade Sam goodnight, and promised to stay safe and get home as soon as they could the next day.

“I can drive, if you’re tired,” Cas said, and pointed to the back seat of his truck. “You can sleep back there.”

Mary shook her head. “You need rest too, Cas; don’t try to deny it.”

He might be an angel, and Mary knew from her boys that Cas could keep going while he was gut shot, fevered, suffering from broken bones, but the point was tonight he didn’t have to.

And anyway, when she looked at him, she wasn’t sure he had another six hours of travel in him either, whether as a passenger or the driver himself.

There was a motel up ahead; she remembered seeing the sign on the way to the bunker hours earlier. It’d do for tonight, and they could be on their way again early in the morning, and get back to Sam, and try to find some other way to help Dean.

++

Mary booked the room while Cas took in their bags.

When she closed the door behind her, the angel was sitting on the bed nearest the door, forearms braced on his thighs, head slumped.

“Cas?”

He looked up at her, and she could see the hopelessness settling in over him, probably not helped by another failed lead and him getting hurt earlier.

“Cas.”

She sat down next to him, and turned him towards her.

“I’m alright,” he said, and Mary shook her head at the obvious lie.

“If you don’t take care of yourself, you can’t help Dean,” she said. She knew enough from observing Cas to know the best way to get him to co-operate, and wondered what it said about the angel, about his relationship with her sons, that he put their wellbeing so far above his own. “He wouldn’t want you to run yourself down like this.”

So Cas offered no objection as Mary helped him strip down to the waist, and carefully probed the huge bruise forming across his shoulders and upper back.

He twitched, a little, so she knew it hurt, and it worried her that he hadn’t started healing. But the problem with Heaven had affected all the angels’ Grace, and maybe Cas was just too run down to bounce back like he normally did.

If he hadn’t pushed her aside, though, she wouldn’t be in any state to bounce back.

She’d be dead. Again.

“Trust our luck,” she said. “They take everything of use, and just leave booby traps.”

Cas said nothing.

Mary grabbed for the trash can, figured some ice might help in the short term, and get Cas some relief. She planned to try and coax the angel to sleep, or whatever they did to rest and recuperate, and that would would probably be easier without the pain of a huge bruise across most of his back.

“Where are you going?” Cas asked, when she got up.

“To get you some ice,” she said. “Don’t worry, I’ll be a minute. Just stay there, okay?”

Cas looked worried, and made as if to get up, but Mary gave him the _mom_ look. It still worked on her boys.

She was gratified to see it worked on their angel, too.

++

Getting Cas to change into sleep pants and a tee shirt took a little persuading, but in the end she managed it, and got him to lie down, on his side, and take what rest they could.

Sam had trusted Cas to her, and she knew that both her sons felt a deep responsibility for the angel, just as he did for them.

They had formed their own tight knit family, and she took a lot of comfort knowing they hadn’t been alone to deal with everything thrown at them in the years since she’d been gone.

She wanted to take Cas home just as he’d left with her. And, she realised, she was starting to look at him like one of her boys.

One of her sons, because she felt like the angel hadn’t exactly had a lot of parental care in his lifetime, however long that had been.

She just hoped Cas would accept that from her, but so far it seemed positive; he’d been a little confused by it, but hadn’t rejected her at all.

That was a good sign.

They’d get Dean back, and she’d have three sons to take care of then, and on that happy thought, she sank into sleep.

++

Cas lay still and quiet, letting his Grace focus itself on healing the injury to his back.

The ice hadn’t really helped, but then he hadn’t told Mary that parts of his spine and shoulder blade were cracked, and there was some nerve damage, because he didn’t want to trouble her.

He’d recover, and her trying to help him had been a touching gesture.

But now she needed her rest, and though it was hard to find any position to be comfortable in, Cas didn’t move, stayed on his side, and tried to think what they could do next to help Dean.

There had to be something, but there were so many problems to be solved: first, finding Michael. Then finding a way to contain him, without harming Dean, until they could find a way to force him to leave.

And then finding a way to kill him.

Not for the first time, Cas wondered if Dean could hear prayers with Michael inside him. He hadn’t risked it, so far, hadn’t wanted to give Michael any more power over them, and hadn’t wanted to risk somehow tormenting Dean or giving Michael cause to.

But he wondered if Dean might be aware, still, and desperate to know they were alright.

Did he dare to take the chance?

 _If you can hear me, Dean…. I’ll take care of them, Sam, Mary. We’re here waiting for you_.

There. Nothing that would provoke Michael, Cas hoped, and something that should give Dean some comfort if those prayers made it through.

Now all Cas could do was keep his word.

++

Mary didn’t get as much sleep as she’d expected, that night. Her body needed it, her mind did too, but something seemed off and it pulled her awake.

Old hunter’s instincts, she figured, and turned around to check Cas was okay, if he’d heard or felt something.

His bed was empty.

Mary sat up, and grabbed the gun on her nightstand, and got to her feet.

“Cas?”

She looked at her watch. She’d have been up in an hour anyway, but maybe Cas had gotten better while she slept and had been restless, or bored.

Or maybe not.

He was definitely no longer in the room, but his shoes were gone, and so was his coat and his wallet.

Which gave her an idea of where he’d gone.

Yeah, Cas had the same problem as Dean: caretaking was something of an obsession for them both.

She took the chance to get changed while he was gone, and then sat down to wait.

++

There was a kind of twenty four hour bar/diner next to the motel. Cas didn’t know what kind of food he might get at this hour, but he knew Mary would be getting up soon, and she’d need something to eat before their journey home.

Possibly even something to eat during their journey home, but he was sure he’d find something.

He stepped inside, finding it mostly empty except for a group of men at one of the tables near the bar.

The person on duty was an older man behind the bar, and Cas headed for him.

“Is there food available?”

The guy barely looked at him, and pushed a tattered menu in his direction.

Cas picked some items that could be eaten cold and taken with them, and placed his order.

He didn’t look around, but he knew the men at the table were watching him, and he could hear what they were whispering.

That he looked an easy mark.

That he looked like he was alone.

That they were bored and he was the first thing they’d come across in a while that looked worth their time.

Cas turned, then, to stare at them. He didn’t want any trouble, not with Mary a few rooms away, not with Michael out there somewhere holding Dean prisoner in his own body.

He didn’t have time for any trouble, so better to make it clear now that he was not ‘an easy mark’.

But they stood up anyway, all of them, and then the bartender disappeared into the back.

That told Cas plainly he had no interest in what was about to transpire, and might even have shown no interest in it if it had happened in here, before.

“What’s your name, fella?”

Cas didn’t let his focus settle on any one of them, turning so his back was to the bar as they moved to surround him.

“Not your concern,” he said, and they laughed.

“Oh, tough guy. Not our concern, huh. Not our concern.”

He was the one to hit out first.

++

Mary zipped up her coat as she headed over to the diner. Even if the service there was the worst in the world, there was no way it had taken Cas this long to get them something to eat.

Unless he was stuck on what to order, but something niggled worryingly at her that he’d managed to find trouble.

That seemed to happen to her boys a lot, this talent for stumbling into bother.

She opened the door to the bar and saw her instincts weren’t wrong.

Some guy had Cas in his arms, a crushing bear hug, and was trying to hold him still while another guy got extra handsy with him.

Mary couldn’t believe what she was seeing. They weren’t trying to rob Cas, they were trying to ….

She tugged the handgun from her pants, and started forward, but then Cas kicked out at the guy in front of him.

He doubled up, groaning, and staggered away. Cas drove his head back sharply into the nose of the guy holding him; he let go, yelling as blood spurted down his face.

But the fight wasn’t over yet; there were three other guys, and Cas looked to have pissed them off enough that they weren’t going to take it easy on him.

One of them grabbed a chair, swung it at the angel; Cas caught it and wrenched it from his hands, and tossed it aside. He gave the guy a shove that sent him crashing across a table, and then turned to intercept his friend who was coming at him with a switchblade.

Cas took the swipe, ignoring the thin line of red it drew across his chest, through the black tee shirt Mary had convinced him to change into, and backhanded the guy with enough force to spin him around and send him crashing to the floor.

The guy with the broken nose though, he wasn’t done, and he was swinging one meaty fist to connect with the base of Cas’s skull.

Mary got there first, and slammed her gun against his head, putting him down hard.

She grabbed hold of Cas and tugged the angel back, behind her, and trained her weapon on the other men.

“Takes this many of you, huh,” she snapped. “Stay where you are, you bastards.”

They glared at her, but between Cas and her gun, the fight seemed to have gone out of them.

Mary pushed Cas back, towards the door, felt the angel’s hand on her waist as he guided her with him.

“We were just trying to have a little fun,” one of them said.

She heard Cas opening the door, and then aimed her gun at the head of the guy who’d spoken.

“Nobody touches my boys,” she said. “You better remember that, just in case you bump into us again.”

Then Cas was pulling her out of the bar, and they ran to their room, grabbed their stuff, got in his truck, and tore out of there.

++

“It’s kind of a Winchester tradition,” Sam said, when they were home, and had told him what happened.

He’d known immediately that something had, and trying to keep the details from him was just making him worry.

“Yeah?” Mary took a sip of whiskey, wincing at the sharpness of it, and nodded at Cas to try his own drink.

From his expression, he wasn’t a fan, and he pushed his glass over to her.

She grinned, and tipped its contents in with her own.

“Can’t count how many times me and Dean had to bolt from a motel room,” Sam said. There was a moment of awkward silence, but he pushed through. “Not always ‘cause we couldn’t pay the bill.”

She sobered, a little. Hopefully none of those times had been because somebody had tried to gang rape one of them.

If she found out that it had been, God, she’d find out which bar as well, she just knew it.

But Cas had held his own tonight. It still troubled her that he’d been in danger and she hadn’t known, but he’d dealt with it, like she knew Dean and Sam would have it they’d ever been in anything like that situation.

Her boys could take care of themselves, but it didn’t mean she wasn’t going to take care of them as well.

And when they got Dean back, which they would, she’d make up for all the times she hadn’t been around to do just that.

**Author's Note:**

> Some guys try to force Cas when he goes to get food for Mary, but he has it in hand, and there is at most minor groping before he kicks their asses.


End file.
